New Trials Started in Germany Against Nazis Who Killed Jews

September 9, 1966

BONN (Dec. 8)

Eight former officers of Hitler’s SS, charged with shooting and deporting to death camps of more than 40,000 Jews, went on trial as war criminals today before a jury in Darmstadt. The principal defendant in the proceedings is a former high SS officer, Herbert Hertel. All eight committed the war crimes, according to the indictment, at Kolomeya, Polish Galicia, during the period 1941-1943.

A new mass murder trial also began Friday in Freiburg with Walter Tormeier, 57, a former Nazi security officer in Krakow in occupied Poland as the defendant. He was charged with ordering in 1942 and 1943 the shooting of 114 Jews in Migiletch in the Krakow district. More than 40 witnesses from the United States, Canada, Israel and Germany will testify. The trial is expected to last until next February.

One of the 16 former SS and Gestapo members on trial in Stuttgart on charges of participation in the wartime murder of 160,000 Jews in the Lvov area in occupied Poland testified today that he had killed one elderly Jew who was unable to walk. The defendant, Ernst Heinisch, 65, also testified against Ernst Epple, another defendant. Heinisch said that Epple had shot many Jews in the back of the head and had given orders for the murder of many more.